CATABANI(Καταβανεῖς), a people of Arabia, named by Pliny (Plin. Nat. 6.28. s. 32), and Strabo (16. p. 768), and placed by the latter at the mouth of the Red Sea, i. e., on the east of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, and west of the Chatramotitae. Their capital was Catabania, perhaps the same as the Bana of Ptolemy. Forster takes the name to be simply the classical inversion of Beni Kahtan, the great tribe which mainly peoples, at this day, Central and Southern Arabia (Arabia, vol. 2. p. 155, more fully proved in vol. i. pp. 83, 84, 131, 132), and finds in them the descendants of the patriarch Joktan ( Gen. 10.25, 26), the recognised father of the primitive tribes of Arabia ( Ib. 1. p. 77).
[G.W]